HoopsHype.com Columns

Shaq and Yao among poorest performers
by Dennis Hans / April 26, 2004

After the first nine days of the NBA playoffs, it’s time to assess who has come up short. Some on our list are still alive and kicking, and we’d like nothing better than for them to redeem themselves and start performing up to their capabilities.

In no particular order, here are our biggest playoff disappointments:

- Rasheed Wallace. He’s doing a solid job on the boards and on defense, but he’s played like a wilted flower on offense. Too many long outside shots, both inside and beyond the arc. Too few post-ups. Worse, when he does get the ball down low, he’s settling for fadeaway jumpers. Instead of putting the pressure on the Bucks defenders he’s bailing them out. The proof is in his free-throw attempts: 1.3 per game. I never thought I’d say this, but the Pistons’ other Wallace, Ben, has been far more assertive and effective in the post.

- Yao Ming. Part of Yao’s problem is that the media have overhyped the guy, thus raising expectations. But my expectations are more modest, and he hasn’t lived up to them. He’s reminding me of Rik Smits, albeit with better court awareness and passing skills. In critical stretches in the pivotal Game 4, Yao was Rasheed-like, settling for outside shots rather than taking it to Shaq and exploiting Shaq’s defensive deficiencies. Yao is not a superstar. Right now, he’s a very good offensive player and an adequate defender. The latter is partly due to his own shortcomings, but partly because Jeff Van Gundy and Patrick Ewing seem to have persuaded him that the best way for a laterally-slow 7-5 guy to be a good help defender is to try to draw charges rather than block shots. He’s committing lots of dumb fouls because he’s playing like a Maurice Taylor, Kurt Thomas or Michael Doleac, rather than a Tim Duncan or Mark Eaton. I mention the former Jazz giant because, at a similar stage in his career, he was blocking 5.5 shots per game. Yao blocked 1.9 per game in the regular season, down to 0.75 in the playoffs. He needs to take angles that avoid contact and give him the space to block and change shots. Right now, the absolute last thing on the mind of a Laker driver is “Where’s Yao?”

- Stu Jackson. First came the foolish suspension of Ron Artest for leaving the bench in response to some on-court pushing and shoving. Bad rules are made to be broken, ignored or changed. Jackson should have said something like this: “Artest violated the letter of the rule but he conformed to the spirit of the rule. In the space of one second, the passionate Pacer achieved total control of his emotions and thus refrained from intervening in the scuffle. So instead of imposing a one-game suspension, as the rule requires, I will personally award Ron a gold star for ‘Cool-headedness By a Former Hothead.’ He won’t be suspended, and in the offseason this poorly written rule will be revised.”

- The officiating. Blame here lies even more with Stu Jackson and the Rules and Competition Committee (RCC) he oversees than with the referees. The RCC guides the refs in their interpretation of the rules, and I have never seen so many obvious blocking calls ruled to be charges as I’ve seen in the past week. There’s a snowball effects, as those calls encourage the bowling-pin defenders while turning the penetrators into tentative performers, tippy-toeing around so as to avoid charge-induced foul trouble. Freedom of movement is disappearing from the NBA game, and it’s the fault of Jackson and the RCC.

- Jason Williams. Not only did the Grizzlies playmaker revert to his Sacramento form by launching horrendous, low-percentage treys, he was thoroughly outplayed by Tony Parker. Granted, Parker is more talented. But more importantly, Parker keeps adding ingredients to his game; Williams has not. Parker has a rich variety of inside-the-paint, high-percentage shots, including patented teardrops that are tough to block because he releases the ball on the way up, a la Antawn Jamison. Williams inability to create a good shot on his own was never more apparent than in Memphis’s heartbreaking Game 3 loss, when he and his teammates repeatedly failed to get off quality shots down the stretch.

- Gary Payton. Like his hero John Stockton, he’s finding out that no matter how great your physical conditioning, once you pass 35 you can’t guard a quick, elusive penetrator, and Steve Francis fits that bill. Couple that with an erratic outside shot and it’s not hard to see why his minutes are down overall and way down in the fourth quarter. Next year, Payton needs to find a team where he can be paired with a small, quick shooting guard (someone in the mold of Bobby Jackson, Dajuan Wagner or Allen Iverson) who can defend playmakers while Payton harasses the shooting guard.

- Brad Miller. Two years running he’s been a playoff disappointment, and both years the reason has been his own thick, macho-laden head. Miller subscribes to the old-school philosophy, “If you can walk you can play.” That’s a prescription for turning minor injuries that would heal with just a little bit of rest into chronic injuries that leave you a shell of your mid-season self come playoff time. Last season, Miller came back way too soon from a foot injury and was useless in the playoffs as the Pacers were humiliated by the Celtics. This season he made the same mistake with a sore elbow, and probably worsened the condition by continuing to play when the injury first flared. Miller is terrific when healthy. However, like most everyone else in the league, he’s not much use when he’s lame. His major goal should be to help the Kings compete for a championship — a title they have little chance of winning with a hurting, ineffective Miller.

- Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq hasn’t been terribly active or mobile, so maybe his knee is worse than he’s let on. But there’s no excuse for his shooting 31 percent from the stripe. Shaq has known for some time that his FT stroke is even more a mess than usual. He shot 49 percent in the regular season, and he should have taken concerted action at least a month before the playoffs started. That would mean calling in the guy who helped him achieve his best FT stretches. That would be former LSU sharpshooter Ed Palubinskas, who dug Shaq out of his deepest hole, setting the stage for solid performances that were instrumental in the last two titles of the Lakers three-peat run. Against the Rockets, he’s averaging 3.3 for 10.5. Those bricks could easily have left the Lakers in a 3-1 hole. An early playoff exit would have made for a most unpleasant offseason for Shaq, resurrecting the criticisms from years gone by.

Paul Pierce and Stephon Marbury could be considered here, but it’s not fair to fault them for failing to do the impossible: single-handedly lead very sorry teams to victory over vastly superior foes.

Dennis Hans’s essays on basketball — including the styles, rhythms and fundamentals of free-throw shooting — have appeared online at the Sporting News and Slate. His writings on other topics have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald, among other outlets.

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